Monday, January 02, 2006

Who Is This Mary Exmas of Whom You Speak?

Happy freakety new year to yinz all!

It's dreary and rainy here, so dark you need to turn the lights on even though it's afternoon. I can't say I particularly love days like this, but if I can stay in and putz around on the computer, well, so much the better.

We had a lovely Christmas with my parents and all the kids (on Christmas Eve, actually, which was fun). The silliest present was what Wayne got my dad. There's been a family "feud" for years where my folks send us noisy, annoying gag gifts. We've got the singing Christmas tree, Bruce the Spruce, and the dancing/singing snowman, a Christmas wall clock that plays an entire Christmas carol every hour, the singing bass fish, a dancing/singing birthday cake -- well, you get the idea.

We've never caught up on this feud. One year we got close when we gave my mom a cute stuffed reindeer that plays "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" when you squeeze his hoof. But really, we were losing the war desperately.

Until this year.

Until Wayne bought the mother of all gag gifts for my deer-hunting dad. It sings. It dances. It lets you do karaoke. It sings some more. It has a full repertoire of songs, mostly country crap redone by a two-bit singer and piped through its moving, lifelike mouth. Its name is Buck.

As soon as my dad ripped off the paper, he shouted, "That's it! They win!"